Gawker wedding expert Phyllis Nefler has some thoughts, and those thoughts include pigs in a blanket and the bleakness of the bouquet toss.

So I've been to four weddings in the last six weeks and I have some observations. Listen up.

Honestly, if you're going to have a DJ, just make an iPod mix. Nix the party favors (particularly those in the jam/jelly genre, unless your wedding is being held at an orchard) and spend the extra savings on a live band, specifically a Motown-style one that has upwards of ten people on stage at all time. (Bonus points if they specialize in 10-minute versions of Proud Mary.)

Screw the wedding cake with elaborate fondant icing. Does anyone actually like that disgusting gummed-up sugar? Serve good coffee. Serve good wine, but only during the cocktail hour. Have a cocktail hour. With pigs in a blanket.

Consider buffet-style dinners in lieu of stodgy and slow service, but serve late night snacks about an hour before the end of the wedding. Burgers, mini grilled cheeses, or dumplings.

If you're going to pay a wedding planner, make sure she's not a raging bitch who will terrorize your guests.

Is there anything more ephemeral to spend a week's salary on than giant flower centerpieces that make dinner table conversation an impossibility? No one will notice their loss except your best friend's snobby mom, and she's found fifty other faults already.

Oh, and speaking of flowers: don't do the bouquet toss unless you have some dramatic gorgeous balcony from which to throw. Most brides end up inadvertently line-driving the bouquet directly into someone's chest and it's always bleak and embarrassing for everyone involved.

* * *

So, wow, Kelly McGillis got married this weekend to a ladyperson! Does that make Top Gun the most famous movie in which both romantic leads are gay? I have to point out that the scarf she wore was owned in green by me, Phyllis Nefler, and I wore it in the scene in Troop Beverly Hills where I come into the courtroom and tell the judge that I'm sorry I was late but I was busy describing fall fashions to the blind and one man said he could actually feel the colors and it was inspirational. You know the one? I annoyingly can't embed it here, but check out the 2:00 mark of this YouTube.

Anyway, it's kind of a sad story? I wasn't aware that McGillis had such tough times (the sub-headline for the article reads: "A new start for survivors of rape, addiction, discrimination and stardom," which, I mean) but I'm glad she seems to be happy and it's nice that her ex-husband/father of her kids was at the wedding. Love this detail, tho:

Ms. McGillis made toasts, including to Mr. Tillman and Jaclyn Klee, his 27-year-old girlfriend.

Heh, nice. Also I forgot she was in Witness. That was like my dad's favorite movie. Dads love Harrison Ford.

I haven't watched the featured video this week because I'm having too much fun comparing the print teaser: "In a video feature, Lindsay Auer and Matthew Collins tell how they met in 2006 at a SoHo art gallery that was displaying one of his surfboards" with the sentence: "Mr. Collins, 32, is in his final semester of studying toward a nursing degree" and just imagining it. The surfing man-nurse! I feel like that was maybe the plot of that show John From Cincinnati.

Ms. Harris is a daughter of Kate C. Harris and Donald S. Harris of Osprey, Fla. Her father retired as the vice president for public affairs and communications for Philip Morris International in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her mother, a psychiatric social worker, retired as the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development in New York, which provides therapeutic and educational services for children. The center was founded by the bride's maternal grandparents, the late Mamie Phipps Clark and the late Kenneth B. Clark, psychologists and educators whose research with black children was used by the N.A.A.C.P. in arguments to the Supreme Court that led in 1954 to the landmark decision in Brown v. the Board of Education.

The bridegroom's maternal grandfather, the late Leon Hess, was the founder of the Hess Corporation and the owner of the New York Jets. The bridegroom's maternal great-grandfather David T. Wilentz was the attorney general of New Jersey who prosecuted the Lindbergh kidnapping case in 1935.

The bride is a weekend anchor of Good Morning America: +1
The groom is "the former director of the Office of Management and Budget in Washington" and "a distinguished visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations" and "a contributing columnist to the New York Times": +3
The groom graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and received a PhD from the London School of Economics, which he attended as a Marshall scholar: +6
The bridegroom's first marriage ended in divorce: -1
The bride's father is a math professor at Yale: +1

The bride's name is Elizabeth Sherburne Van Heuvelen and she ain't changin' it: +1
"The couple met at Williams College, from which they graduated, the bridegroom magna cum laude": +3
The bride received a master's degree in international economics and international relations from Johns Hopkins: +1
The groom received "a law degree from Harvard and a master's degree in medieval Icelandic studies from the University of Iceland": +5
The bride's mother "was appointed by President Obama as a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a group focusing on improving the way the government works": +1
"She had just returned from Beijing studying Chinese, and I had just returned from Oxford": +1
"They soon learned they had carrels next to each other in the library": +1